Gratitude
by beeftony
Summary: Zuko has trouble settling into his room on Ember Island. Takes place immediately after The Southern Raiders.


As the sunlight slowly drained from the horizon and the moon rose up to take its place, Zuko sighed and began unloading his belongings onto a bed that was far too massive. It had been intended for two people, royalty at that, and he had no one with whom to share it. Still, the others had insisted that he take it, seeing how the house belonged to his family and all.

So much had changed since the last time he'd been to Ember Island.

For one thing, the queasy, gnawing, directionless anger that had made his life unbearable for weeks had now transmuted into hard conviction. He couldn't see the truth back then because he could barely think; barely breathe as he was suffocated by everything he ever thought he wanted. Breaking free of that was simultaneously the easiest and most difficult thing he'd ever had to do.

And even then, his ordeal wasn't over. It was one thing to tell his father that he was going to join the Avatar and help restore balance to the world. It was another to put those words into action, to convince Aang and his friends that he really had changed. The only thing that kept him going through all that was his own refusal to give up.

He was already finished unpacking. Zuko had never kept much in the way of personal effects, even when he had an entire ship in which to store them. The room looked even more barren than it had before he'd scavenged its sundry decorations to use as kindling a few weeks back. It didn't feel like home.

Zuko sat down on the bed. Was it right to come back here? Sure, it made for a perfect hiding spot, but the memories it triggered were not conducive to keeping a level head. Everywhere he looked was a constant reminder of his many failures, and of how he had ended up in a place where doing all those horrendous things made perfect sense to him at the time.

But maybe he needed to remember. He couldn't forget why he had left. There burned within him a deep, unrelenting desire to _set things right_ , and if he allowed himself to forget his mistakes, he would be in danger of repeating them. Still, was being content for five minutes too much to ask?

The relative optimism he had allowed himself at the Western Air Temple was steadily being crushed under the oppressive weight of this place and everything that came with it. He had been a fool to think he deserved any sort of peace after everything he'd done.

"Aaaagh!" Zuko balled his fists and drove his knuckles into his face as he collapsed onto his back, keeping his feet on the floor.

"Trouble settling in?"

He sat up. Katara stood in the door frame, fixing him with a concerned eye. She had changed into Fire Nation clothes and was currently holding a bag of her things under her arm. Hers looked larger than his, a testament to how much she had accumulated on her journey.

"The bed's too big," he said, frowning. "And this place brings up some bad memories."

"I'll bet. Can I come in?"

Zuko nodded.

Setting down her bag at the foot of the bed as she entered, Katara sat down next to him. She radiated a soft, gentle aura that he had only witnessed for a brief moment underneath Ba Sing Se, and which he had never expected to see again after what he did to her. She had been right earlier. She was the first to trust him, and he had let her down. He had let _all_ of them down, especially his uncle. She had forgiven him, but he didn't deserve it.

"Are you going to be okay?"

"I'm not sure yet. I'm usually not okay."

"Yeah, I've figured that out about you." One corner of her mouth tugged gently into a smile, and her fist gently tapped his shoulder. "You know why? It's because you never give yourself a break."

He frowned harder. "I don't deserve one."

Katara put her hands together and rested them on her waist. "A day ago I would have agreed. But you're one of us now, Zuko. It's okay to open up and let someone else share your burdens for a while."

A very skeptical eyebrow was his only response. He had spent so much time in fear of her wrath that he had no idea how to react to her being nice. Was this how she was with the rest of the group? He'd only ever interacted with them from the outside, and Katara had always been justifiably hostile towards him. His skin was suddenly a couple sizes too small.

She laughed, piercing his bad mood in a way he hadn't really expected. "Look, I'll admit that you never letting up was what got me to finally give you a chance again. You didn't have to help me find my mother's killer like that. It wasn't fair of me to put all that anger on you just because I couldn't get past what you did to me in Ba Sing Se."

"You had every right to be angry with me," said Zuko, shaking his head. "It was something I had to make up to you. You forgiving me wasn't the goal. I just wanted to set things right."

"I get that, and thank you. But there's a world of difference between my anger with you and the hatred I feel towards Yon Ra. I shouldn't have lumped you in with him."

He looked away. "It's alright. I'm used to it."

"What do you mean?"

"Let's just say the Fire Nation has done enough bad in the world that I shouldn't expect anyone to like or even trust me."

"Zuko." She placed a hand on his shoulder, and he slowly turned his head back to look at her. "Most of what the Fire Nation did happened long before you were born. And yeah, you've made a lot of mistakes, but you've worked hard to make up for them and we've all forgiven you. You can't hold yourself responsible for every single thing your nation did wrong."

"Maybe you see it that way, but most people I've run across don't."

"Like who?"

He scowled at the floor. "I don't want to talk about it."

Katara moved her hand down to his and squeezed gently. "It's okay. You can talk to me."

Silence reigned over the room for the next several moments as he tried to summon the words. "A few months ago, when my uncle and I were still in the Earth Kingdom, we split up for a little while and I was travelling by myself. I stopped in a small town that was being taken advantage of by Earth Kingdom soldiers who acted like thugs while the real soldiers were off actually fighting the war."

His features tightened. "I met a boy in the village who took me to his house, and his family let me stay the night. I left the next morning, but not before the boy's father got word that his other son had been captured near the front lines. He went off to find him and the boy and his mother were left on their own. I gave the boy this to keep him safe."

Reaching into his bag, he produced a small ivory knife that had been with him through all his travels, and handed it to Katara. She unsheathed it and read the inscription.

"Never give up without a fight."

"My uncle got that from an Earth Kingdom general who surrendered after he broke through the outer wall of Ba Sing Se."

She giggled just a little bit before composing herself. "So how come you still have it?"

"The boy's mother came and found me a few hours later. She told me he pulled it on the soldiers when they came back to harass the family after his father left. They took him away and said if he was old enough to fight, he was old enough to join the army."

Katara covered her mouth with her hands.

"She asked me to help and I agreed. I scared off three of the soldiers without having to use my firebending, but their leader, Gow, was an earthbender. It was the only way I could win."

"So what happened after that?"

"Obviously the people of the town didn't react well to seeing a firebender beat up their troops, no matter how badly the soldiers were treating them. I ended up leaving right after."

Katara looked furious, but it was not directed at him. "But that's crazy! You saved them from people who were exploiting them, and they didn't even appreciate it?"

He shook his head. "We're at war, Katara. The Fire Nation has been ruining lives all over the Earth Kingdom for a hundred years. Standing up to a few bullies isn't going to undo all that. Like I said, I'm used to it."

"Well you shouldn't be! Couldn't any of them realize you were only trying to help?"

The conviction in her words stunned him for a moment. Katara really was like water; calm and gentle when at rest, but capable of great fury and destructive power. But there was something else behind her eyes. Something he hadn't expected to see in a waterbender. It was something he had witnessed many times over the last year without ever truly noticing.

Fire.

It was that fire, that passion, that had propelled her to where she was. It made her a fearsome warrior with the energy and drive to achieve whatever she wanted. He recalled the lesson his uncle had tried teaching him as he sketched the symbols of the four nations into the sand, and it began to sink in all over again.

Still, that uncompromising idealism could just as easily prevent her from seeing things with any sort of nuance.

"Even if they had, it wouldn't have mattered. I was still lost back then. You didn't trust me at first either."

She crossed her arms. "That was because of the things _you_ did, not just the fact that you were Fire Nation."

"Okay. What would you have done?"

Glancing off to the side, she began nervously stroking her hair with alternating hands. "Well, I was actually in a similar situation when we were hiding out in the Fire Nation before the Eclipse. We came across a fishing village whose water was polluted by a factory upstream. The people were sick and couldn't get any medicine, so I… intervened."

"How?"

Katara blushed slightly. "I may have dressed up like a local river spirit and done some healing waterbending, then sabotaged the factory."

His eyes widened with surprise. "You dressed up like the Painted Lady?"

"Yeah, how'd you guess?"

"Industrial sabotage is the kind of news that makes its way to the Royal Palace," he said. "And the Painted Lady is known for her healing abilities."

"Ah. Well anyway, the rest of the group helped provide some special effects while I scared off the Fire Nation soldiers who came to get payback for the ruined factory. But in the process, the villagers figured out I was really a waterbender."

"And let me guess, they were overcome with gratitude."

"Well, not at first. But Sokka and the others stood up for me and we helped them clean the river. At the end of it, the real Painted Lady came to me at night and said thanks. So it all worked out in the end."

Zuko crossed his arms and glared at the door. "Good for you. But you had friends willing to vouch for you. And the Water Tribe isn't exactly terrorizing the world like the Fire Nation is."

"That's my point, Zuko. You're not alone anymore. You have us now. It's okay to let other people in."

He said nothing. He hadn't expected this from her. He had her forgiveness for what he'd done, but Zuko had believed that he had lost any semblance of a support system along with his uncle. He'd taken him for granted and betrayed him, and now he had no idea what to make of Katara actually being concerned about him. A part of him appreciated it, but the rest of him was hesitant and untrusting, as if the floor beneath him could give way at any moment and he would go right back into freefall.

"Zuko?"

"Yeah?"

"What happened to your mother?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Huh?"

"I just realized I spent all that time in Ba Sing Se yelling at you about how the Fire Nation took my mother away, and I never asked you what you meant when you said we had that in common."

"Oh." Zuko turned to stare at the opposite wall. "It's not something I like to remember."

"It's okay if you don't want to talk about it. I've made you open up enough."

"No, it's fine." He shook his head. "The truth is, I don't know what happened."

She tilted her head to the side. "What do you mean?"

"I mean the last thing I remember is her walking out of my room when I was ten, and I haven't seen her since."

Katara rested her hands on the bed and pulled herself further onto it, sitting cross-legged and staring at him. He followed suit. "Do you know why she left?"

"I've only been able to piece bits of it together over the years. I still don't know exactly why."

"Tell me."

"Well, it all started when my cousin Lu Ten died during the Siege of Ba Sing Se."

Katara gasped sharply. "Your uncle had a son?"

He nodded. "It's the reason he abandoned the siege and came home. But he didn't turn up for another year. In the meantime, my father asked Fire Lord Azulon to let him succeed to the throne instead."

"And he agreed? I guess I never really thought about why your uncle wasn't Fire Lord."

"No. He didn't."

She frowned. "Then what happened?"

"I don't know. Or I should say, I'm not sure."

"Why not?"

"Because the person who told me what happened was Azula."

"I see. What did she tell you?"

Zuko lay back and stared at the old wooden rafters that held up the ceiling. "She said that Fire Lord Azulon ordered my father to kill me so he'd know what it felt like to lose a son."

"Well obviously she wasn't telling the truth. Even someone as evil as your father would never do something like that. Azula always lies."

"I thought so too. But when I confronted my father on the day of the Eclipse, he told me it was true, right before he shot lightning at me."

"Real nice family you got there."

Zuko chuckled darkly. "Yeah."

"They could both be lying?"

"Even if they were, I wouldn't put it past my father. He's the one who gave me this scar."

"Wait, what?"

He sat up again and looked her in the eye. "When I was thirteen, I attended one of my father's war meetings. One of his generals planned to sacrifice a battalion of new recruits so the rest of the army could flank a much stronger earthbending force." Zuko frowned. "I spoke out against it. Because I spoke out of turn, my father said I would have to fight an Agni Kai. I didn't realize until it started that he meant I'd have to fight _him._ "

Katara stared in horror. "Because you spoke out in his war room?"

He nodded. "I dropped to my knees and begged for mercy. My father was disgusted that I didn't even have the guts to fight him, so he burned me and banished me from the Fire Nation. He said the only way I could come home was if I captured the Avatar."

It was silent as Katara processed that. "So _that's_ why you were always chasing after us?"

"Yeah."

"I thought you just got that scar in a training accident or something. I had no idea."

"It doesn't excuse the things I did," he said. "I had the opportunity to set things right back in Ba Sing Se, and I didn't take it. I went with what I thought I wanted, only to find out how hollow it all was once I got back home. I should have known better than to listen to Azula."

"I guess it doesn't help that Azula only found out you were in the city because I thought you were up to no good and panicked."

"What do you mean?" He'd never actually thought about how Azula discovered him and his uncle.

"I was on my way to deliver the Invasion orders to the Earth King, and I decided to stop for tea."

"At the Jasmine Dragon?"

Katara nodded. "I saw you and your uncle and I freaked out. I ran to warn the Earth King, only to find out Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee had disguised themselves as the Kyoshi Warriors. They threw me in that prison."

"And then lured me and my uncle to the palace by inviting us to serve tea to the Earth King."

He had been stupid, really. He should have known that he couldn't goad Azula into an Agni Kai when she could just as easily have the Dai Li overwhelm him.

"It wasn't your fault," he said. "I still could have turned against her and I didn't."

"Look," said Katara. "You were confused, and you didn't know what you really wanted. In a way, I think it was meant to be. You had to get everything you _thought_ you wanted so you could figure out your real destiny."

"Maybe. All I know is if I'd sided with you then, the war would be over by now."

Silence crept in once more, and Katara began to twirl a few strands of her hair.

"So you still haven't told me why your mother left."

"My father filled in some of the gaps when I faced him during the Eclipse," said Zuko. "But the pieces were there all along. Azula came into my room and told me my father was going to kill me, then my mother dragged her out. The next thing I knew, she was in my room saying goodbye, and the following morning Fire Lord Azulon was dead."

Katara put a hand over her mouth. "You mean she…?"

"As far as I can tell, yes."

"Wow."

"My father said she was banished for what she did. Which means she could still be out there."

"And you never looked for her?"

He shook his head. "Finding Aang and the rest of you was more important. I have to help restore balance to the world."

Zuko lay back again and stared at the ceiling. She mirrored him on the other side of the bed, her feet coming to a rest beside his head.

"You're right. This bed is pretty huge."

"Yeah."

"You know, it's weird. I met you almost a year ago, but this is the first time I've really gotten to know you."

"I don't blame you. I did some awful things."

"I know. But I forgive you."

"Thanks."

"Do you feel any better?"

He was silent for a moment. "Not really."

"Why not?"

That was a good question. He should know the answer to that by now, given all the time he spent dwelling on it. Zuko eventually just said the first thing that came to mind.

"I still feel like I haven't done enough."

"What are you talking about? You've gone above and beyond. Besides, forgiveness isn't about evening a score. It's about wiping the slate clean."

"I know. I still feel guilty."

Katara sighed. "Look, Zuko. Aang forgives you. Sokka forgives you. Suki forgives you. _I_ forgive you. Toph never really had anything against you to begin with, but she supports you too."

"I know!"

"My point is, you can't get rid of that guilt until you forgive yourself. It's okay to learn from your mistakes, but don't let them chain you down."

He frowned. "I'm not sure I know how."

"That's okay," she said. "I'll be here to help you. We all will."

They said nothing after that, and eventually sleep claimed them both. Suddenly the bed, and the room around it, didn't feel quite so overwhelming.

* * *

Author's Notes: I did my annual rewatch of ATLA and felt inspired to write this. I hesitate to call it an actual story, though. It's more of a character study to get me used to writing these two again. A large chunk of this is information the audience already knows, which is why we never got a moment in the show where Zuko spills his backstory to the rest of Team Avatar. But in fanfic, it's fun sometimes to go over things again and have the characters draw parallels, make commentary, and learn something new about each other and themselves.


End file.
